Comment: The Gambler starring James Caan

 Such an interesting movie. Caan plays an English professor with a gambling addiction.  He's $44,000 in debt to the mob's loan sharks;  so far, an ordinary movie.  What separates it from run-of-the-mill movies are Caan's English lectures.  The one on William Carlos Williams' "In the Grain" series of essays on history and literature through biography was fascinating. I immediately bought a copy for my Kindle. The lecture provides such a counter-point to the professor's own life: Washington was desperately afraid of losing and that caused him to abjure risk. Williams applies that observation to the American psyche: Americans fear change above all else. "Americans fear new experience more than they fear anything." (D.H. Lawrence. They are the world's greatest dodgers because "they dodge their own very selves."

Of course, the movie is all about risk and finally ends with a more prosaic ending.

2 + 2 = 5

 I happened to be reading about the Underground Man by Dostoevsky (Notes from the Underground) and the meditation on 2+2=5 seems to fit the Trumpists very well. Much like Dostoevsky’s “underground man” these idiots are trying to express a rejection of 2+2=4. They (unconsciously, no doubt) posit 2+2=5 to the world, especially to authority, to say “fuck you” to the system. This supposedly shows they have some kind of free will and a rejection of modern corporate society. "Truth" is what they say it is, usually in an overbearing and loud voice. Doesn’t matter how many proofs there are that says they are wrong. If they say it’s right, it must be, precisely because they say so. Not for nothing is this an example of absurdist and atavistic thinking.  but they are not smart enough to recognize it. 

"Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength....And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death....I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. "

Recommendation: Catcher Was a Spy, movie with Paul Rudd

 Looking for a good movie? Watch The Catcher was a Spy with Paul Rudd. Based on the real exploits of Moe Berg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg] a pro baseball player who spoke 10 languages, and Werner Heisenberg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg] a German Jewish physicist who won the Nobel Prize for hie development of quantum mechanics and, of course, the uncertainty principle. American intelligence was worried Heisenberg was working on an atomic bomb. Berg was sent to Germany to assassinate Heisenberg. It's a fascinating story, well acted by Rudd who had to study 5 languages in order to be able to pull off the conversations he needed to have in those languages in the film. Astonishing performance. Interesting physics, too. Read the Wikipedia articles first to be astonished by these two (three.)